"It's amazing that the heart makes no noise when it cracks."
— Robert Cormier (Heroes)

"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time, unlike, say, a brain surgeon."
— Robert Cormier

"It doesn't matter how big the body, it's what you do with it."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)

"The possibility that hope comes out of hopelessness and that the opposite of things carry the seeds of birth - love out of hate, good out of evil. Didn't flowers grow out of dirt?"
— Robert Cormier (After the First Death)

"That's what Archie did - built a house nobody could anticipate a need for, except himself, a house that was invisible to everyone else."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)

"A new sickness invaded Jerry, the sickness of knowing what he had become, another animal, another beast, another violent person in a violent world, inflicting damage, not disturbing the universe but damaging it."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)

"A terrific sadness swept over Jerry. As if somebody had died. The way he felt standing in the cemetry that day they buried his mother. And nothing you could do about it."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)

"What could he say? After the phone calls and the beating. After the desecration of his locker. The silent treatment. Pushed downstairs. What they did to Goober, to Brother Eugene. What guys like Archie and Janza did to the school. What they would do to the world when they left Trinity."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)

"Kill Your Parents and Become the Victim. What a wonderful country. . . "
— Robert Cormier (Tenderness)

"The beautiful part of writing is that you don't have to get it right the first time--unlike, say, a brain surgeon. "
— Robert Cormier

"Cities fell. Earth opened. Planets tilted. Stars plummeted. And the awful silence."
— Robert Cormier (The Chocolate War)